I don’t want to be someone else.
I just want to stop carrying
my case file in my hands.

I want to walk into the room
without the compulsion to lay my
history on the table—
like a passport, like a disclaimer,
like proof I am allowed to be here.

Because for a long time
explanation felt like armour.
If I could make it make sense,
maybe they’d sheath their sword.
maybe they’d hold me gently—
different than the last.
Maybe they’d see more than patchwork,
and call it a life.

Some live childhood
like a slow unfolding—
years stacked neatly,
friendships that lay foundations,
a body that feels like home.

Mine has missing chapters.
Not the poetic kind.
The kind that sits behind my eyes
like a door that won’t open,
and I can’t see to
the other side.

Memory fails me—
but my body remembers.
It keeps the ledger.
It doesn’t bounce back
the way my age
promises it should.

I was not forged in classrooms
or the soft mess of being awkward
and forgiven.
I was forged in custody—
in glass rooms with no exits,
learning tone,
learning danger,
learning what people meant
by what it cost me.

So— yes.
sometimes I am too direct,
or too careful,
as if I am translating
myself in real time.
I learnt connection late,
under pressure—
enough to crack,
but not to shine.

And then I became a mother.
Adulthood arrived
without training wheels.
No practice life before.
Every choice
landing on a child’s shoulders.
I have never known adulthood
without her hand in mine.

Some people find themselves slowly.
I lost myself packing lunches,
holding a world steady
with one tired body
and one tired heart.

Diagnoses are not a footnote here—
they are the hand that held the pen
long before anyone named it.
The way sentences are built:
actions collected as data,
documented as evidence.
Intuition cross-compared
with insight.

I carry scars:
of accidents,
of addiction,
of hands,
of words—
lessons only learnt
when life violates sanctity.

When your name
becomes a weapon.
When childhood
becomes territory.
I watch my history
on a screen—
bruised lips
on a child’s face.
Mistaking control
for adulthood.
Surviving,
but tarnished.

Now—
I choose another road.
A woman stitching
life together.
Shedding roles
that were once a cage—
now context.

I choose to walk forward
without dragging my origin
like a chain that clinks
when I laugh.

And I want to be seen
without this disclaimer—
just because I am here.